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Bus or Bike Now, Ride Rail Later from Eastwood-Area Bungalow

Poke along Polk St. in the Woodleigh area of “Greater Eastwood” to find this vintage brick bungalow. Since it’s next to an auto repair service, the home acts as a bookend shoring up one end of a mostly residential block. A convenience store caps the other end; a shopping center is in the next block.

The listing’s location close to Cullen Blvd. means both current and future public transportation options. Metro buses, for example, stop nearby and Polk St. itself has a bike lane. Meanwhile, Metro Rail has 3 stations pending in the area, though each might turn out to be a bit of a hike from the home. It’s about three quarters of a mile to the future Green Line’s York and Lockwood/Eastwood stations. The Purple Line’s Leeland/Third Ward stop is going up just over a half-mile away.

The house boasts classic features of 1929 domicile design: porches, wooden trim, interior archways. Listed earlier this month at $124,900, the property is offered “as is.” Here’s what — at least as the photos show it — that means:

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Double French doors in the living room lead to a study. The single French door opens to the master bedroom:

Beyond the arched doors lies the dining room:

A breakfast room off the kitchen also connects to the dining room:

In the kitchen, cabinets have exposed hinges and upper cabinets have glass fronts:

The 1,505-sq-ft. home has 2 bedrooms. In the master bedroom, a double window looks out onto a sun porch.

Floor tiles in the lone bath are bordered by a Greek key motif:

Recently replaced equipment in the home includes the electrical box and air conditioning condenser. Its decked attic has blown-in insulation. The water heater is about 5 years old and the roof was replaced a decade ago. There’s no garage, but you can throw yard stuff into the storage shed out back:

Nice house. I remember back in the mid 80’s when places like that were available in WestU for about the same price. My wife and I would see an ad for one in the paper, go rushing down to WestU to look at it and find a bare patch of brown earth where the house stood a few days prior. We never could get to a house before the builders.

A number of years ago, my folks lived in a house with those glass french doors leading to their bedroom. I didn’t understand why on earth a bedroom would have see through doors.

Now, in the old country house we are restoring, the bedroom is right off the living room and the original door is half glass. We’ll leave it of course, but I still don’t understand the thinking with glass doors and bedrooms.

The house on Polk is charming and I love all the arches but the one thing I’d have to change is the kitchen.

The Polk street “bike lane” is a joke. Cars park on the street, making this “bike lane” ineffective as you’ll have to swerve out into traffic several times per block.

Meanwhile, the immediate location is terrible. Polk gets lots of traffic passing through, the “convenience store” is of the scary, run-down variety (next to a scary, run-down variety laundromat).

I’m not a real estate pro, so I don’t know how much more you could charge for that house on a same-sized lot just one block away, but this is the worst possible area in Eastwood. It’s not a coincidence there are so many long-time-on-the-market houses and empty lots on Polk.

Peter, that C-Store isn’t scary! I used to walk there most nights from over a half-mile away to buy my 40-ounce adult beverages. I was stalked and attacked by a pair of playful stray kittens one evening, but that was downright adorable. Nothing even the slightest bit unnerving ever occurred, otherwise. I’ve had worse experiences shopping in the Spec’s Midtown parking lot than anywhere in Eastwood.

Having said that, this particular house is next to a tire shop. As a buyer, I wouldn’t like that.

It seems the tire shops and corner stores won’t be there a few years from now. Once the east end becomes the next area subject to gentrification houses, or lots, like this will double in price. Buy it now, make it livable, lease it and see what happens.

@ Chris: That’s all fine and well, I like Eastwood’s land values too. But, if someone is going to buy there, they should probably be careful to heavily discount any home that adjoins a tire shop that could be converted into a bar with no structural modifications. The only noise worse than machine noise is people noise.